New tools and method for monitoring ionizing radiation delivery in medical physics

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The goal of this research is to develop tools to improve the efficiency of radiation treatments. We will do this by following two distinct strategies. The first strategy is to develop new dose measuring devices capable of rapidly, accurately and precisely measuring the complex radiation dose delivered by state-of-the-art radiotherapy techniques such as radiosurgery. The first device is a detector capable of measuring radiation doses in three dimensions and as a function of time. The success of radiotherapy requires an accurate delivery of radiation dose that tightly match the shape of a tumor. Thus, 3D dose measurement is the best possible way of guaranteeing that radiotherapy can indeed reaches its target as planned. A second 3D detector will be built to study the impact anatomical changes during radiotherapy. Anatomical changes can reduces the efficacy of radiation treatments. It is therefore important to quantitatively evaluate their impact. While these impact can be estimated by computer simulations, there is currently no instrument that can directly measure them as a function of time. These new detector devices and the analysis software we will develop to interpret their results will have the potential to help medical physicists and other professionals to better control the accuracy of cancer treatments. ******The goal of our second strategy is to build a virtual safety net with smart algorithms that automatically analyze images produced during radiation treatments to guarantee that treatments are delivered accurately. Most radiotherapy delivery machines are equipped with X-ray imaging capability. In principle, these images can be used to monitor patients, but doing so is time and resource intensive. Furthermore, human-based monitoring is often inconsistent. Therefore, such imaging capability are often underused, especially in the context of busy Canadian radiotherapy clinics. By conceiving a prediction model, we expect to detect potential problems before they have a chance of altering treatment quality. This will form the basis of agile radiotherapy, a new treatment paradigm that aims to anticipate changes in radiotherapy patients through an image processing technique known as radiomics and then automatically suggest possible course of actions to efficiently correct problems as early as possible. These smart algorithms could eventually be included in the radiotherapy workflow and act as a decision support system that will help guide medical physicists and even physicians.